Dragonfly Summer

So, what's new here...?

This week has been Vacation Bible School in the mornings. Yeah. By late night on Wednesday, I found myself trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to convince The Boy that the Church no longer tortures and kills unbelievers or heretics. He was becoming convinced that reading a book about the Roman empire at VBS would result in his being stoned to death. Or something. Yeah. We had been tinkering with cutting his dose of prozac, but now I'm re-thinking it. Yeah.

The Girl and I have been footloose for about an hour and a half every morning. We flitted about town -- to the Sam's Club, to the museum, to the Office Depot, to Jo-Ann Fabrics -- and I've been able to hang out with the kitchen ladies. It has been very instructional, re-teaching "walk with me", teaching her to ask, "May I go to x?" instead of just bolting, etc., talking politely to the church ladies, that sort of thing.

See, I spent the kids' first few years teaching them doggy commands: come, stay, sit, shake, give it -- and now I find myself teaching the last one. No, not "play dead". I'm teaching "heel", only we call it "walk with". My kids follow me like baby ducks, and it's much more irritating than you'd rationally think, especially as my ageing neck gets stiffer by the year. "Where are you mutts? Why are you behind me?!"

Ah, summer. In the deep south. Want to know why they call it "dragonfly summer"? Because the bugs are so bad that the dragonflies swarm all over the place all the time. It's a little creepy sometimes. But cool. But not in a temperature sort of way...